Detective James Rogers sat at the shabby desk in the corner of the kitchen and wrote busily in his notebook while Johnny squatted on the upended box and watched him. Once again the kitchen was quiet; it was three hours since Johnny had found the body in the meat locker, had called the police, and the cloud of investigators had descended upon the place as they had the night Dutch had been killed. The body had been removed, and Hans had been given a needle and taken upstairs, and the uniformed and plainclothesmen had done their big and little jobs and departed, and only Detective Rogers remained.
In the silence he wrote on, less rapidly, pausing to frown at the wall, and he finally slipped his pen back in his inside breast pocket while he riffled pages and re-read what he had entered. He sighed deeply, closed the book with a snap, and looked over at Johnny. “A ringtailed wowzer of a mess, brother.”
“Yeah,” Johnny agreed. “Look, before you put that notebook away-I couldn't reach Joe this morning-”
“Out of town all day.”
“-so I'd better give this information to you. Were you with him when he called me last night?”
“No. I had a note from him this morning saying you'd scooped that gunman that had been living in your pocket lately, and that I should make arrangements to talk to him when his snow melts off.”
“This was at the same time. Joe said he'd been trying to work out Freddie's rung on the ladder in this thing, and the part that bothered him was the telephone call I'd heard him make resignin' from a stool pigeon detail. That's the call my girl on the board didn't catch, and last night after Joe called me I talked to a man who told me why.” “Because he didn't make it?” the sandyhaired man hazarded.
“Because he didn't make it. His place is wired up like a Christmas tree. I couldn't get near him unless I used a helicopter. He knew I was there, and he gave me the informer bit, and I went for it hook, line, and sinker.”
Jimmy Rogers shrugged as he re-opened his notebook. “It looks to me like your character-good-for-a-laugh, as you introduced him, has had the laugh on all of us.” He pulled out his pen and stared at it. “Still does, for that matter. We don't have him yet.”
“I'm beginnin' to smell hair burning.”
“We're getting closer, but we're not ready to bundle this up and run downtown to put it in the D.A.'s hot little hand. Not yet.”
“Then what the hell do you need, for God's sake? Doesn't this thing here tonight point to him all over again? That's what they were doin' in the kitchen here that night, him and that Frenchie what's-his-name. They were tuckin' the stiff away in the locker, and poor old Dutch caught them at it. Who else could get in that box?”
“The man that was with you when you opened it, for one.
“Hans?” Johnny rubbed his chin. “He could, at that. But I know it was Freddie.”
“Can you stand up in court and prove it? Let's talk sense. For instance, didn't the behavior of this Hans-” Jimmy Rogers glanced down at his notebook, “-Reider strike you as being something out of the ordinary?”
“He threw a fit, for sure. Horns and all. I had to knock him out to get him out of the box. He was orey-eyed, frothin' at the mouth in German, it sounded like. He came to while your examiner was here and threw another wing-ding, and your boy slipped him a needle and packed him upstairs. Hell, I told you all that before.”
“I know you did. I'm trying to make a point, in my feeble way. If reaction could be laid out on a Fahrenheit thermometer, just where would you rate his performance?”
Johnny grunted. “212: Right through the roof. He took it big.”
“I'd like to know why. I'm looking forward to our conversation in the morning.”
“His nerves were gone, anyway. He'd been sweatin' out the promotion here, afraid he was going to be bypassed. He'd just got through tellin' me he wasn't sleeping good.”
“The shylocks had him. He'd borrowed heavily recently.”
“Yeah? So he needed money bad? No wonder he wanted the job so bad he could taste it. Say, that reminds me… last night when I left the place to check that thing out for Joe I ran into Hans on the sidewalk waitin' in a doorway up the street. I got curious and doubled back, and the one he was waitin' for turned out to be this Myrna telephone operator on the middle shift. You know the one?”
“I know her. A well-frosted tomato.” Jimmy Rogers turned pages in the ever-ready notebook. “Myrna Hansen. Age thirty two. Collecting alimony from two ex-husbands. Up on a lightweight blackmail charge six years ago. Nol-prossed. Completely uncooperative under questioning.”
“I can see I should've asked you that yesterday. Did you see the body before they took it out?”
Detective Rogers closed the notebook again. “You mean his face? I wondered when you'd get around to that.”
“He looked like he'd had a hard time.”
“Doc says he had it while he was alive, too. With a knife.”
Johnny grimaced. “Somebody carved him to make him talk? Rough.”
“It complicates things. Either we have someone in the crowd getting out of line and being disposed of-and the method makes it unlikely-or else there's an opposition crowd on the scene.”
“Maybe Hans can straighten it out for you.”
“I'd like to think so. What's on your mind now?”
Johnny looked at his watch. “Work. All this has been on the house. My shift's just coming on.”
“The lieutenant will probably want to talk to you tomorrow.” Jimmy Rogers slapped his pockets automatically to account for his belongings, nodded to Johnny, and walked out of the kitchen through the service door at the bar. Johnny sat and listened to the diminishing sound of his heels on the tile, and then it was very quiet in the big kitchen.
Johnny was on his way through the lobby to the street when he heard his name called. Marty Seiden, a middle shift front desk man, waved a red and white envelope at him from the registration counter. “Cablegram, John. Just came in.” Marty was a fresh-faced youngster addicted to pointed collars and bow ties; he had a highly developed clothes' sense, and he looked approvingly at Johnny as he stepped up to the desk. “You look really sharp, John.”
Johnny glanced down at his lightweight summer suit as he slit open the cable. “Handsome is as handsome does, kid. Or don't they teach you that in school these days?” He ran his eyes over the block type on the white sheet.
IN TONIGHT CHECK BOAC OFFICE CALL SHIRLEY RESERVE
mario.
He crumpled the sheet in his hand and stood undecided a moment before nodding to Marty and turning away from the desk. He looked at his watch; plenty of time, but he would have to-
“Why, Ugly! How nice you look!”
Johnny looked down into the round face, brown eyes, and sleekly shining hair of the girl who had stepped into his path, and he smiled. “Hi, Frannie. How's the sociological experiments coming along?”
She blushed vividly and tossed her head. “Don't be mean. I came by to apologize for acting like a snapping turtle the other night. I must have sounded like a shrew.”
He steered her out of the lobby traffic and over against the unoccupied bell captain's desk and considered the serious young face. “You were a perfect lady, Frannie, except in your instincts, and that's the way a man likes to have his lady function.”
A fresh wave of color enveloped her. “You make it sound-well, it probably did look-I'm not like that all the time, really.”
“Now you're disillusioning me.”
Her look was reproachful. “Go ahead and tease; I suppose I deserve it. I do want to thank you, though; you kept me from making a mistake. I realized how silly I must have sounded when I got to my room. I brooded about it for a while, then I went out to the elevator hoping I could find you and apologize, so that you wouldn't think I was just a nitwit schoolgirl, but that man said you had just gone down for the doctor.”
“Doctor?”
“Yes. For the man with the bleeding face. He must have had a terrible fall. The dark man said he'd just sent you down, so I went back to my room. In the morning you weren't around, so-”
Johnny's mind raced into high gear. This pretty youngster had stumbled on the opening act of the drama in the kitchen the night Dutch had been killed; it was so simple when it was all laid out for you. Frank Lustig hadn't been a no-pay skip from 938 that night; Frank Lustig had been killed in 938 by Frenchie Dumas, and the girl had walked in on the operation of transferring the body to the room service elevator for disposal in the kitchen. Frank Lustig was the body in the meat locker.
Johnny opened his mouth to ask the girl if Dumas had been alone with the bleeding-faced man in the corridor, and dosed it again. He must have been alone; if the other man was Freddie, and the girl had seen him, the way this crowd played she very likely would herself have ended up in the meat locker. Johnny looked at the well-scrubbed youthful glow; you had a very, very close call, little kitten. Eight lives left. He held out his hand, and she put her small, warm one in his solemnly. “Apology accepted, Frannie. You come back and see me in about five years when you get bored with your husband.”
“I just might do that,” she said pertly, and he released her hand. “Good-bye, Ugly.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Good-bye?”
“Au 'voir,
then.” Under his approving eye the girl flushed brilliantly, turned on her heel, and sped from the lobby, and Johnny smiled after her. In five years that kid would be something to see. In five years-
“Robbing the cradle these days, mister?”
Johnny turned his head; he had been facing the foyer, but he hadn't seen Shirley come in. He inspected the tall girl's dark beauty critically. “You wanna deprive me of my simple pleasures? You look a little better than you did the last time I saw you.”
“I want to talk to you about the last time you saw me, mister.”
“Not in that tone of voice, you don't.” He straightened the crumpled cablegram in his left hand and thrust it at her. “Here. Wipe the slobber off your chin with that.”
She snatched it from his hand without even looking at it, her eyes slits. “Don't you get tight with me, Johnny, or I'll-”
“You'll what?” he asked her softly. “My name's not Martin. You want to play rough, I'll bounce your tail a foot high off this lobby floor, an' enjoy it. Now why the hell did you come over here?”
Her smile was mocking. “I forgot I was talking to a professional hard guy. My request is simple, sir. I merely want to know why I woke up after you took me home the other afternoon with my brand new gold toreador pants in one and a half inch strips all over the bed, and my backside so sore I couldn't sit squarely? Do you beat unconscious women now for amusement? I looked in the mirror this morning, and it still looks like an Indian smoke signal against a desert dawn. I want to know how come?”
“I was lookin' for needle punctures,” Johnny told her tersely. “When I found 'em, I got mad, and whacked you once.”
“You had a hell of a nerve!” she said harshly. “Did you ever try minding your own business? You've got-”
“Ahhh, break it off,” he said wearily. He looked at the angry, beautiful face. “You hooked solid?”
“Of course I'm not!” she flashed.
“Willie know you're on the stuff?”
Her smile was triumphantly vindictive. “Yes, little boy, Willie knows. Isn't it a shame you won't be able to be the first to give him the news?”
Johnny felt sick; he sensed she was telling the truth. When he remained silent, Shirley remembered the cablegram in her hand. She read it quickly, and her lip curled. She looked at Johnny. “The master's voice. Did you call BOAC's overseas office to see what time he'd get in?”
“You're on the payroll, kid. You call 'em.”
Her lips tightened. 'You trying to start something with me? Some one of these days I'll give you-” She broke off as she thought of something; she looked again at the cable. “'reserve mario.'“ She tore up the cablegram into thin strips; her tone was bitter. “I'm not going back to that place of Mario's. Willie may like to play big shot and be greeted at the front door by the maitre d' bowing from the waist, but not me. I don't like those places where you can't get the frost off the help's chins. Anybody who isn't a charter member couldn't make an impression over there by carpeting the floor wall-to-wall with twenty dollar bills.”
“Willie's been goin' to the Casa Grande for twenty five years,” Johnny said patiently. “He's known Mario longer'n that.”
“Willie's going to have to make a few changes in his routine.” She smiled at Johnny sweetly. “I'm working on it.” “Willie could fool you, kid. Willie 'n me-” The smile vanished. “Willie 'n me,” Shirley mimicked savagely. “Damn Willie and you! And damn you and Willie I'm sick of the combination eternally dinned in my ears! Doesn't either of you have a life of your own any more?” She turned furiously and flounced out through the foyer, her high heels clicking spitefully, and Johnny stared after her.
“Boy,” he murmured finally. “Boy, oh boy. Happy days are here again. Rack 'em up in the other alley, Sam.”
Very thoughtfully he resumed his interrupted progress to the street.
The shades were drawn in the apartment bedroom, and if it was not dark, Johnny decided, it was at least a pleasant twilight. He could see the shape and outline of the larger objects in the room but not the details. He sighed, stretched lengthily, and turned his head to look at the pale blur of Sally's relaxed figure on the bed beside him. “I ate too much, ma. You shouldn't feed me like that.”
“Once a pig, always a pig,” she murmured drowsily, and Johnny smiled and ran a palm lightly over a smooth shoulder. Sally's head came up abruptly from the pillow. “Listen, man, are we going to sleep, or are we going to play? Make up your mind.”
“I feel like talkin', ma. Reach me a cigarette.”
She groaned in protest. “I'm sleepy, Johnny-” He could feel her movement as she stretched to reach the night table, and in the near darkness her features were indistinguishable as she leaned back over him. Her hair swirled about the lighter oval of her face as she traced the shape of his lips with an enquiring finger before inserting the cigarette, and light flared in her hand, flickered, and steadied to an even glow. Johnny stared up over the cigarette lighter into the soft brown eyes and the revealed thin features, shiningly translucent in the flame. He drew deeply on the cigarette, and Sally released the lever action on the lighter, and the cloaking twilight again rushed in upon them.
She snuggled back along the length of his body, and then almost at once she lifted her head again. “Well, buster, what happened to all that conversation?”
“I'll get around to it.”
“Oh, come on. If you don't have anything to say, at least let me sleep.” She came up on an elbow and peered down into his face, trying to make out his expression. “Or do you have something?”
“Well, did I tell you Willie'll be in tonight?”
“You know perfectly well you didn't tell me.” She dropped back on the pillow, and he could hear the edge of resentment in the soft voice. “I can see where I'll be a bachelorette for sure while he's in town. Did he call you?”
“Cable. He's in Europe. Or was. Gonna be kinda nice to have ol' Willie around.”
Her voice had softened. “You think a lot of him, don't you?”
“Willie's all right.”
“What makes him such a hero, outside of having a few dollars?”
“Hero? Aww, hero's a dirty word, Sally. What you need to remember about Willie is that when the heroes are takin' to the trees Willie's just gettin' into second gear.”
“He certainly doesn't look it.”
“You don't know him like I do, ma. We've seen a few tough sunrises come up over the horizon, Willie 'n me.” He lay there remembering.
When Sally spoke again her tone had changed. “Have you talked to Lieutenant Dameron since last night?”
“No, and that reminds me-I ought to call him. I found out somethin' about that.” He dragged on the last half inch of cigarette and stubbed it out with a long reach over her shoulder. “You don't ever want to be hangin' by anything tender while you're waiting for the police to call you with information, ma.”
“Even when you're helping them?” She sounded indignant. “And after what you did for them last night?”
“Toe's a little touchy about my help. He's afraid I'll go off half-cocked in the action and jeopardize his official position. He wants me, but he wants me under wraps. And that thing last night wasn't such a much I did for them. The butcher would have found him anyway when he opened the box this morning, so I only got them about twelve hours. 'Course sometimes twelve hours is a hell of a lot but this time I don't see that it means much.” He grinned into the darkness. “Hell of a thing to have in your mind, but you know all I could think of last night? I was picturin' Karl, the butcher, walkin' into that box this morning if we hadn't found the stiff. Karl's always half smashed goin' to work anyway, account of the cold.”
Beside him he could feel Sally shiver, and he reached for her. He slipped an arm about the slim body and drew her closer to him, and after a moment he could feel her lips on his cheek. “I'll be glad when this is all over,” she sighed.
“I got a feelin' we're close to the payoff window right now.”
“It's getting so I'm afraid to go to work nights. And it's not much better here when you're not around, since that man was here the other afternoon.”
“That man is in the sneezer, ma. You can scratch him from the entries.”
“Yes, and I love the way you and Paul didn't tell me a word about it when it happened.”
“Just savin' your nerves a bruise. You get shook too easy.”
She sniffed audibly, and he tightened the arm around her and listened to the hissing intake of her breath. After a moment he disengaged the arm, slipped it from beneath her, sat up, and slid off the bed. Sally's head lifted as she tried to follow his movements in the shadows. “What are you doing, Johnny?” She sat up as he returned and knelt on the bed beside her.
“Johnny Killain, you haven't any pants on!” she accused him as he reached for her.
“Welcome to the club,” Johnny said.
Sally was in the shower when the phone rang, and Johnny rose from the bed to answer it. “Yeah?”
“Johnny? Dameron.”
“Hey, I got something for you.” The bathroom door opened, and Sally's head and shoulders appeared, swathed in a towel. He formed the word “Joe” silently with his lips, and she nodded and went back inside, closing the door. “The guy in the locker last night, Joe; his name's Frank Lustig, and he was registered into 938 the night he was killed. He was killed right in the room, and when they took him down to the kitchen in the room service elevator to dispose of the body Dutch broke up the party.” The line hummed emptily a moment. “I'll buy pair of that,” Lieutenant Dameron's voice said into the little silence. “Let me tell you why I called, though. Jimmy just called me from the hotel. He'd gone over to talk to that cook who was with you when you found the body.”
“Don't tell me he'd bugged out on you-?”
He could hear the dry rasp in the other voice. “Oh, he was still there. Jimmy broke in the bathroom door and found him in the tub. Both wrists slashed, he bled to death very tidily.”
“Christ! We needed to talk to that guy.”
“I doubt we can extradite him from where he is now.” The lieutenant's voice sounded less forceful than usual. “I'd counted myself on talking to him. I think he could have given us a few answers. That was a good move on your part last night, incidentally.”
“An accident. Sitting in the kitchen it came to me all of a sudden that Dutch hadn't said 'clocks' like Manuel thought; he'd said 'box,' and he knew what he was talking about. Right now I'm not sure it was a good move at all. The butcher would have found him this morning anyway, and we'd have still had Hans. Jimmy said he was in up to his hips with the shylocks, but that's a strong rebuttal.”
He had a better reason or thought he did. The body may have been registered into 938 like you say, but his name wasn't Frank Lustig. It was Frank Rieder, and he was Hans Rieder's younger brother.”
“Mmmpfh! Have we ever got a wide screen production goin' now.”
“We can't seem to get a break on the timing on these things,” Lieutenant Dameron said tiredly. “Two hours earlier on that report, and the cook would probably still have been under sedation.”
“You figure he'd been going so bad financially that his nerves were gone and finding his brother was the last straw?”
“I figure it a little stronger than that. It almost has to be that he'd brought the brother in to help out on something he was promoting, and the realization he'd gotten his brother killed did it. And the way he was killed-did you see the face?”
“Yeah. Rugged. One thing, though. You can bet me if you think Hans was working with Freddie.”
“Against him, then?”
“Has to be. You realize the payoff on this thing has got to be one hell of a brass ring, Joe? If about four more people show up, Fort Knox couldn't pay 'em off for their trouble.”
“I've changed my mind half a dozen times. I just don't know. It's got to be important, the way people are throwing themselves under the wheels. If Hans wasn't working with Freddie-and offhand I'm inclined to agree with you on that-then that has to mean that Freddie's crowd doesn't take easily to being muscled out.”
“You say 'Freddie's crowd' real strong today. That because of what I told Jimmy last night about Freddie's place bein' all wired up?”
“Partly, but I'm holding a kicker to that pair. We finally got the picture in from San Francisco, and Freddie is not Ronald Frederick, the hotelman.”
“Well, hell, Joe. If you know that, what are you waitin' for? Till we have to move out some of the guests to make room for the bodies?”
“If I had someone to put him near the kitchen that night-”
“Joe, you mean to tell me you aren't gonna pick him up?”
“If I pick him up, you know how long I can hold him without a charge. And if I can't charge him, from the looks of this operation I shouldn't be able to scare him very much, either.”
“So charge him. With murder.”
“And if I don't get a confession?”
Johnny drew an exasperated breath. “Are you trying to tell me you didn't get to be a lieutenant of police by sticking out your neck for false arrest charges? Goddamit, Joe-”
“There's a better way of doing it, Johnny.”
“Like what?”
“Who speaks for the hotel when Willie's out of town?”
“Some lawyer downtown. He don't spit, though, till Willie tells him it's time.”
“If we could convince this lawyer that he should protect Willie's interests by preferring charges against this man for securing a bonded position under false pretenses-I don't need a murder charge to hold him, Johnny. I just need an airtight charge.”
“It might be easier than talkin' to the lawyer.”
“How?”
“Willie'll be in town sometime tonight.”
“He will? That's fine. You bring him around.”
“I still think you ought to scoop Freddie right now.”
“I happen to have a little more at stake in this thing than you do, Johnny. You bring Willie around tonight.”
The phone clicked in Johnny's ear, and he hung it up slowly. He sat and stared at the wall. A couple of days ago he had wished for a ravelled thread in the fringe that would lead back to the counterpane. Now there were as many threads as fringe and still remarkably little that a man could put his finger upon exactly.
Johnny roused himself finally and looked around for his clothes.
He walked into the bar from the lobby and watched Fred work his way up the shining mahogany, polishing with a rhythmic sweep of a long arm. The bartender looked up as he sensed his audience and threw the bar rag behind him. “Hope we're a little busy tonight. Damn time drags so when we're not… you workin' two shifts lately, Johnny? Seems like every time I see you you're in uniform.”
“Getting ready for the next depression,” Johnny told him. “Manuel around?”
“Out in back. He'll be right-here he is now.”
The slim dark boy ducked under the counter with a trayful of glasses which he set down on the bar. “'Lo, Jonee. Up early?”
“Medium. You got a blade, Manuel?”
“But of course.”
“Like to borrow it a few minutes.”
“Seguramente.”
Manuel reached into a hip pocket beneath his wraparound apron and carefully removed a pearl-handled knife whose silvered blade slithered silently open at the pressure of a finger. Johnny accepted it and laid it thoughtfully across his palm.
“I wanted it for a gag, but this damn thing doesn't look a bit funny.”
Manuel smiled. “Ees not meant to be fonny.”
“No? Tell me something, hotshot-what happens when you got to get to this thing in a hurry? In that hip pocket you'd be starched an' ironed before you ever got it sprung.”
The smile widened. “If I theenk the need for hurree ees approach', Jonee, eet ees no longer een the heep pocket. Eet ees move a leetle closer to the corrida.”
Johnny shrugged. “I don't dig you knife men at all. Be back in a few minutes with this.”
“No hurree. Earth ees the bes' for remove the blood, like a plant in the lobbee.”
“You bloodthirsty little spick!” Fred growled at him. “Didn't the man tell you it was a gag?”
The dark, innocent eyes widened. “But of course. I heard heem say so, deedn't I?” He picked up his tray of glasses and moved on past them, and his back was to Fred as his left eyelid flickered ever so slightly at Johnny.
“He thinks you're gonna use that thing,” Fred rumbled.
“He thinks it more than you think,” Johnny agreed. He made a short, sharp downward stroke with the graceful blade. “You believe the kid can really cut the mustard with this hatchet?”
Fred rubbed his chin. “I'll take him on trust. Couldn't feel comfortable around him knowin' for sure.”
Johnny snicked in the blade, slipped on the safety, and dropped the knife in a pocket. He saluted the mildly interested Fred and walked on out through the lobby which drowsed in the dinner hour quiet. He crossed directly to the switchboard and entered through the little gate, and Myrna's orange head bobbed up inquiringly from her book. The half smile of inquiry on her face faded upon recognition. “What do you want?”
“A few pearls of wisdom, C.O.D.”
“For you I have nothing,” she said flatly. “I went along with you once, and it was a mistake.”
“Who says it was a mistake, Myrna?”
“Never mind.” Her voice was resentful.
“Police talk to you?”
Her lip curled. “Two hours. Nosy bas-” She looked up at him.
“What'd you tell them?'
“The same thing I'm telling you. Nothing. Not one thing.”
“You think that was smart?
“Would I have done it if I'd thought it wasn't? Come on, blow, wise guy. I'm busy.”
Johnny nodded. He reached in his pocket and took out the knife, and Myrna's chair started to inch away from him. She was backed into the corner by the time he slid the safety off and flicked out the blade. He had the entire front of the switchboard to himself, and the eyes behind the horn rimmed glasses were enormous.
Still without a word Johnny laid the opened knife on the bakelite front of the board and pushed it toward her with his left hand. “Take a look,” he suggested.
“L-look-?” Her voice was a croak.
“Did you know the boy up in 938, Myrna? A knife just like this sliced his face to ribbons. You sure you know what league you're playin' in these days?” She stared mutely, a hand at her throat. “You and Hans pullin' oars in the same boat, maybe? You know what happened to Hans?”
“Stop-” The tip of her tongue circled her lips swiftly. Her voice strengthened. “Stop it. And get out of here. And get that damned knife out of here. Who the hell do you think you are?”
Johnny retrieved the knife, folded in the blade, tapped the solid casing on his palm, and returned it to his pocket. Myrna rolled her chair back out of its corner, her hands patting ineffectually at the wild hennaed hair. Her face was ghastly, and the lips bloodless.
Johnny half turned to go and then looked back. “Last chance, Myrna.”
“Get out of here! Fast!”
He shook his head commiseratingly. “I gave you an out, kid. I'm not even gonna feel sorry for you when they come for you with the knife. I wish I had your nerve, that's all.”
She looked around wildly for something to throw, and her voice rose hysterically. “Damn you, get out-!”
No score, Johnny thought to himself as he re-crossed the lobby. She's scared, though, and not of my palaver. She may come around yet when she thinks it over.
He entered the bar and stepped behind it at its nearer end, and the boy Manuel looked up from his preoccupation with lime squeezing. Johnny silently offered him the knife.
“Ah, senor!” the slim youth said cheerfully, wiping his hands on his apron. “Eet deed not take long?”
“Not long. Thanks.”
“No cause.”
Johnny moved on to the kitchen. It was Mrs. Carl Midler's dinner time, and Mrs. Carl Muller interested Johnny.